a sliver of a thought about empowerment, as a sex worker, as a sex performer, as a body

On Friday at This Human World Festival, Sadie Lune and I got the chance to talk about porn and sex work. The experience “flew by” and I realized afterwards how much more I wanted to say, or perhaps, how much the conversation continues on in constant flow. as i take my morning shower. as i walk down the street. in another conversation with a journalist. in conversation with my partner. now in some writing. “empowerment” is this constant dialogue between my selves or sides of selves, in constant state of becoming. the empowered self informs actions, the actions themselves empower the self. the empowered self informs more actions. it is not one or the other or one without the other.

i am in this constant process of finding new language with which to understand and speak about sex work, about work with sex. sexuality. performance of sex. performance of sexuality. simply: why do i do what i do, why i dig and continue to dig into these questions. the questions: what does it FEEL like to put the naked body on stage, the naked sexualized body on stage (is my body even sexualized any more, given my age, given its exposure, given its strangeness? but HAH! was it ever unequivocally sexualized, in any case, at any point? no.). what does it feel like to put this body in front of other people; in light of their sexual orientation, in light of their sense of power, their sense of entitlement, in light of their sense of shame, in light of their gender. can this “body” be subversive relative to the socialized sense of what it symbolizes to see the naked cunt-bearing thin white body? And then again, what does it FEEL like to place the (THIS) naked body next to, in personal relation with, another naked body, to encounter the sexualized selves together. To sexualize each other, to allow oneself to be sexualized. We (my body, my brain, my dynamic becoming selves) would like to understand this. We would like to learn, what it feels like to encounter another body and to decide to provide pleasure, to feel and listen to the other body, to feel and understand their desires and to find the pathways towards that fulfillment. is that empowering? yes, i experience it so.